Quotes and aphorisms on Wales by great authors, writers, poets, actors and thinkers, with a selection of very famous Welsh proverbs and sayings
To be honest, I think that I am a bit of a singer, coming from Wales; being Welsh, we are all very proud of our singing heritage.
Ioan Gruffudd
I had a series of jobs in the small fishing village in West Wales where my family lived when I was a teenager. I worked as a fisherman in the day, and then the skipper and his wife ran a small restaurant – she’d cook the fish he caught.
Johnny Flynn
In Wales, singing and storytelling are party skills, not professions.
Rhys Ifans
I was born in Bala, North Wales, and was sent to a private tutor. I seem to remember walking to the tutor by myself at the age of four – and sometimes going into a church school on the way and being allowed to stay until someone noticed.
Christopher Timothy
The Bristol Channel was always my guide, and I was always able to draw an imaginary line from my bed to our house over in Wales. It was a great comfort.
Roald Dahl
We didn’t travel much when I was little – most of what we did was visit various campsites around Conway, north Wales. My first major holiday abroad was to Ibiza with my parents when I was five. I vividly remember the plane touching down and that the hotel had great swings with lots of little lizards darting about that I was determined to catch.
Paul Hollywood
I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.
Anthony Hopkins
I’m incredibly proud that no matter where you live in New South Wales, whether in the regions or the city, you’re seeing projects come to life and delivered that were only imagined, that were only spoken about by the previous government.
Gladys Berejiklian
Wales was in ancient times divided into three parts nearly equal, consideration having been paid, in this division, more to the value than to the just quantity or proportion of territory.
Giraldus Cambrensis
I grew up just outside Hay-on-Wye, on the borders of Wales, on a farm. It was an amazing childhood, but I got a bit stir crazy when I hit my teens. There was the feeling of having to get out, you know, but it was definitely idyllic.
Jessica Raine
I wish Wales was more represented on the British stage, and I have missed that being in London.
Morfydd Clark
It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales!
Robert Bolt (American author)
All the time I feel I must justify my existence.
Prince of Wales Charles
The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa — slightly off balance.
Prince of Wales Charles
You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.
Prince of Wales Charles
Today, as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle.
Edgar Quinet (1803-1875, French poet, historian, politician)
Only the other day I was inquiring of an entire bed of old-fashioned roses, forced to listen to my ramblings on the meaning of the universe as I sat cross-legged in the lotus position in front of them.
Prince of Wales Charles
When I was in Cardiff, playing with the National Orchestra of Wales, they said they get letters from people complaining if they’re smiling during the concert. Nuts, isn’t it? As if you have to respect the solemnity of the music by not smiling. Music is this joyful thing that enriches our lives, and you’re not supposed to smile?
Bill Bailey
I’ll move back to Wales if and when I have children. I want them to speak the language I speak, but I love living in London. It’s my favourite city in the whole world. I love it because it’s not England, it’s London.
Rhys Ifans
Moving from Wales to Italy is like moving to a different country.
Ian Rush
Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‘I want to get out and become like him’. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.
Anthony Hopkins
There’s so much hard work, dedication, and focus goes in from not just the athletes but from the coaches, officials, governing bodies, and Sport Wales. It’s a real team effort, and it’s rightly called Team Wales.
Lynn Davies
Do not go gentle into the good night. Old age should burn and rage at close of day.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953, Welsh poet)
Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953, Welsh poet)
As a child, I used to spend nearly all my summer holidays with my aunt in Wales, and we used to catch mackerel in a boat and then cook them on board.
Mary Quant
I was born in a small suburb of Ilford in a rather nasty housing estate that my mother despised. She had grown up in the country, so when the war came and I was evacuated to Wales she thought I was much better off there.
Nina Bawden
It’s funny because when you’re a Welshman living in England, you always get the mickey taken out of you for being Welsh, and then when you go to Wales with an English accent because you were born in Bristol and grew up in Birmingham, they say you’re English. You can never win.
Gwilym Lee
We don’t want to push our ideas on to customers, we simply want to make what they want.
Laura Ashley (1925-, Welsh fashion designer)
I was involved with the landmines before the Princess of Wales, and nobody gave a damn about people losing their limbs. It only became a success when she came along.
Joanna Lumley
I’m a Prince of Wales Trust ambassador, so I’m all about giving youth an education, a voice and a chance to not take the wrong road.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Charles was very intent to use his years as Prince of Wales to make his mark while he still had freedom of maneuver that he wouldn’t have as King. The first subject he really went for was architecture. It made an impact.
Anthony Holden
Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953, Welsh poet)
They are all gone into the world of light, and I alone sit lingering here.
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695, Welsh poet)
So stick up ivy and the bays, and then restore the heathen ways, green will remind you of the Spring, though this great day denies the thing, and mortifies the earth, and all, but your wild revels, and loose hall.
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695, Welsh poet)
In Wales, it’s eight different weathers in a day.
Piper Perabo
In Wales it’s brilliant. I go to the pub and see everybody who I went to school with. And everybody goes ‘So what you doing now?’ And I go, ‘Oh, I’m doing a film with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.’ And they go, ‘Ooh, good.’ And that’s it.
Catherine Zeta-Jones
We know, in Wales or in England – you simply can’t trust Labour on the NHS. In England, we are delivering for patients while Labour just use the NHS as a political football. We won’t let them; we’ll always fight for the NHS.
Andrew Lansley
I do what I can, but I’ll always give it a shot. You’re not going to see me playing a Welsh character any time soon, not because I wouldn’t love to. I went up to Wales once and read for a film with Rhys Ifans, and haven’t been asked back since. We did have a nice time on the train on the way back.
Aidan Gillen
Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953, Welsh poet)
Man hath still either toys or care: But hath no root, nor to one place is tied, but ever restless and irregular, about this earth doth run and ride. He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where; He says it is so far, that he has quite forgot how to go there
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695, Welsh poet)
My parents were always Welsh-speaking and very proud of Wales.
John Rhys-Davies
I grew up in a small, strictly-Catholic fishing village on the coast of Wales. The people there have a different attitude to life than those in Hollywood – people stick together more.
Catherine Zeta-Jones
I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.
Ann Romney
The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.
Christopher Dawson (1898-1970, Welsh cultural historian, educational theorist)
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.
Clarence Day (1874-1935, American essayist)
Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953, Welsh poet)
I know we’re not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953, Welsh poet)
Thatcher came under pressure from right wing backbenchers to shut up the Prince of Wales and there was a deal done between them where he did actually shut up in the end.
Anthony Holden
I live in Wales but spend quite a lot of time in London – I stay with my brother. When I get home after being in Manchester or London for a bit, I forget how dark the sky is, and I won’t have seen stars for ages.
Kimberley Nixon
We have a Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales, both elected by fairer votes – involving proportional representation.
Charles Kennedy
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Drives my green age that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953, Welsh poet)
Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare the truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.
Lewis Morris (1835-1907, Welsh lawyer, writer of British verse)
The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.
Christopher Dawson (1898-1970, Welsh cultural historian, educational theorist)
My mother’s family is Christian: her father was a Baptist lay preacher, and her brother, in a leap of Anglican upward mobility, became a vicar in the Church of Wales. But my mother converted to Islam on marrying my father. She was not obliged to; Muslim men are free to marry ahl al-kitab, or people of the Book – among them, Jews and Christians.
Shereen El Feki
I have dual citizenship; it just so happens I live in America. I would like to go back to Wales. I’m obsessed with my childhood, and at least three times a week dream I am back there.
Anthony Hopkins
I’ve spent a bit of time with the Prince of Wales, who I respect greatly. I’d give two cheers for the Monarchy.
Sting
Caesar had perished from the world of men, had not his sword been rescued by his pen.
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695, Welsh poet)
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
Richard Burton
I didn’t speak English until I was ten, when Philip Burton, the schoolmaster who became my guardian, took me under his wing.
Richard Burton
I always speak Welsh to my family.
Richard Burton
The only nice poets I’ve ever met were bad poets, and a bad poet is not a poet at all – ergo, I’ve never met a nice poet.
Richard Burton
How do you live with one person for 13 years and another for eight and find both as alien as strangers?
Richard Burton
The Welsh are all actors. It’s only the bad ones who become professional.
Richard Burton
I grew up among heroes who went down the pit, who played rugby, told stories, sang songs of war.
Richard Burton
Growing up in Wales, there was a lot of fervour about being Welsh. But the more that I travelled, I realised that people aren’t always interested in where you’re from, but who you are.
Ioan Gruffudd
The Conservative Party absolutely can be a party that speaks to mining communities in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and communities based around heavy industry in Yorkshire and County Durham, Wales and Cornwall as well as urban areas like London.
James Cleverly
I grew up in Shropshire, but I was born in Wales. There was a hospital seven miles away, but my dad drove 45 miles over the Welsh border so I could play rugby for Wales. But as a skinny asthmatic, I was only ever good at swimming.
Greg Davies
Cornwall, peopled mainly by Celts, but with an infusion of English blood, stands and always has stood apart from the rest of England, much, but in a less degree, as has Wales.
Sabine Baring-Gould
From the big mountains in the north to the valleys in the south, all through my childhood and teenage years, my family would always holiday in Wales.
Luke Evans
I liked masculine fabrics: Prince of Wales checks, city pinstripes, and flannels – worn with black tights, flattish shoes.
Mary Quant
People can be really famous in Wales for rugby, but outside of Wales nobody really has a clue who you are or what you’ve done.
Gareth Thomas
My mother was Welsh and I loved going to Wales every summer, where Uncle Les had a farm. My mother had seven brothers and a sister and they were all very close. There would always be food on the table and uncles coming in and out. My father’s family were English and lived in London, and we didn’t really see them.
Keith Allen
In every pardon there is love.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
The advice of the aged will not mislead you.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
The best candle is understanding.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
The Welshman keeps nothing till he has lost it.
Proverb
Three things give us hardy strength: sleeping on hairy mattresses, breathing cold air, and eating dry food.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Reason is the wise man’s guide, example the fool’s.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Three remedies of the physicians of Myddfal: water, honey, and labour.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Three things it is best to avoid: a strange dog, a flood, and a man who thinks he is wise.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Of a compliment only a third is meant.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Old age is a hundred disorders.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
A spoon does not know the taste of soup, nor a learned fool the taste of wisdom.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
A warm January; a cold May.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
A wife’s advice is not worth much, but woe to the husband who refuses to take it.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
A woman who scorns you is like licking honey from a thorn.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Adversity and loss make a man wise.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Adversity brings knowledge, and knowledge wisdom.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Adversity comes with instruction in his hand.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Reason is the wise man’s guide, example the fool’s.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
He understands badly who listens badly.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Have a horse of your own and then you may borrow another’s.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
If you would get ahead, be a bridge.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Man’s mind is a watch that needs winding daily.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Nothing is so clean as a fish.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Your hand is never the worse for doing its own work.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
Without perseverance talent is a barren bed.
Welsh Proverb (Sayings of Welsh origin)
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Amazing Wales
